Organisations are nothing without communication and relationships

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Communication, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Teamwork

Organisations can only exist when there is an active system of communication between parties that creates the scaffolding of relationship dynamics. Without communication and relationships, organisations are hollow, empty. And as much as good communication can do for an organisation, bad communication or the lack thereof can tear it down.

In times of crisis and major up upheaval like we are all currently experiencing– in families, businesses, communities, governments, economies and societies – the content, quality and frequency of communication is paramount to our survival, literally.

In particular, what we say as leaders, how we say it and how often we say …

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The Noble Profession of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Sales Essentials, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Self Development, Selling Better, Success

The statement ‘The noble profession of Selling’ may sit well with some. While many others would find ways to say everything to the contrary, bringing up stories about how they or others were ripped off by shonky salespeople. I mean why is it that when someone’s deceived by someone else they say ‘they’ve done a sales job on them’? There’s nothing noble about that, you’d agree.

In a world where it’s too easy to engage and influence people with catchy slogans and memes that can propagate negative stereotypes, fear of the other, division, misinformation and myths, and keep people ignorant or …

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Crowdsourcing Sales Forecasting to deliver better certainty

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Forecasting, Innovation, Opportunity, Sales Forecasting, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Selling Better, Success

People love certainty, especially when it comes to business. Which is why sales forecasting and sales pipeline management can often be the bane of sales leaders and their sales teams’ lives with senior management constantly on their backs wanting to know what deals will land and when, and when the revenue will start to come in. It’s relentless.

So given the current state of the world and the climate of uncertainty, it’s a good time to look at some of the latest thinking and work being done to improve the certainty of sales forecasting and pipeline management.

Current Situation with Sales Forecasting

Tracking …

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Selling Better, Faster – Total Sales Team Turnaround

By / / Case study, Optimism, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, sales-process-map, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Systems Thinking

I’m feeling elated and vindicated yet again.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the future of sales systems and sales stewardship.

Two weeks ago I sat down with a very large key B2B client of ours to do a two year retrospective on their Selling Better Project. Considering where we started with this Executive General Manager  discussing his major issues, concerns, ideas and opportunities around their lack of sales strategy, sales operational framework and sales processes, the lack of stewardship and coordinated discipline within the national sales team, the turnaround and results have been thrilling on many levels:

  • Sales are up 8% and steadily …

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The Sales Juggling Act: how to keep your eye on the sales prize

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Case study, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better

Sales is integral to business. Without sales we don’t have a business.

But running a sales operation, leading the sales effort and guiding and directing a sales team can be a constant juggling act. Sales operations have many moving parts and they all require constant vigilance and effective decision making. The execution risk is always high.

Sales operations and teams are also fragile ecosystems. Set up well to perform to a standard, they require constant hands-on leadership and stewardship; it’s like keeping a set of spinning plates spinning. Take your eyes off those sales plates for a second and everything can come …

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Sales Trend 4 – Trust improves the Learning and Development culture

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends, Trust

Sales Trend 4 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 explores how working within a culture of mistrust affects salespeople and their ability to develop trusted relationships with clients.

Building trust is key to sustainable long term sales relationships. This is surprisingly true even for very large B2B sales, despite the availability of hard facts on the buying company’s reliability, cash flow, payment morale, etc. Trust is still key to long term relationships that doesn’t require controlling and compliance functions all the time.

Creating and earning trust is therefore a skill salespeople have to master, and indeed, a lot …

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How to sell better in uncertain times

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

Here we go again.

Global disarray, government elections, political scandals of betrayal and corruption. How do we keep our head when everyone else around us is losing theirs? How are we supposed to lead business and keep selling better when there’s a general feeling of uncertainty that makes decision making so difficult?

There are those of us who have been around in business for some time now. Many of us have been through a few major crises before such as the GFC and the major recession we had in the early 1990s. Things weren’t pretty, for sure, and yes there was a …

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4 Questions to Test if your Sales & Prospecting Tactics are Ethical

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Prospecting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Selling Better
  • Do other people stand to gain from your sales tactics and actions?
  • Do your sales tactics and actions have a positive influence on your own and others’ well-being and self-esteem?
  • Do your sales tactics and actions move you and your customer closer to your respective short- and long-term goals?
  • Would most people approve of how you prospect for new business and sell?

    • If each of us can honestly answer “yes” to these questions, then it would appear that our sales and prospecting efforts are underpinned by sound ethics and behaviours and set up to deliver a fair exchange of value for both buyer and …

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    We all want better sales performance, but what works best?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Success

    Most of us will agree that as sales leaders we want better and more consistent sales performance. The approaches on how to get there, however, vary greatly.

    Some tactics offer a temporary lift in sales while other strategies deliver more sustainable changes and lifts in performance over the long term.

    We’ve outlined three different approaches organisations take to improve sales performance and their impact.

    Annual sales training session/conference – 1 or 2 day workshop

    Effect
    Result score out of 10

    Popularity
    9

    Long term effectiveness
    2

    Team building
    7

    Risk
    5

    Return on investment
    3

    This is by far the most popular choice amongst sales managers and business leaders. However, the question that needs to be asked …

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    The alarming findings about the Peter Principle & Sales Managers

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Coaching, Collaboration, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent

    Have you ever worked with someone who was really effective in one role but then promoted to other roles, usually management, and ended having no idea and no real capacity to fulfil that role in a competent manner?

    Chances are your answer is ‘yes’.

    This is a common occurrence in many organisations where people are continually promoted until they are no longer effective in their roles – basically they rise to their level of incompetence. This is referred to as the Peter Principle which was highlighted by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in 1969.

    Basically, the problem arises when the skills that makes someone …

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